PD Newsletter #32: With news from Madagascar

Welcome back! Hope those of you in the northern hemisphere have had good summer breaks, and 👋 to those of you just seeing in spring.

From Public Digital this week, we are really pleased to share some of the work we have been doing with the Government of Madagascar as they accelerate digital and public service transformation, in partnership with Caribou Digital and with the support of the World Bank.

Also, in case you missed it, Alessia (who worked with us over the summer) took an in depth look at how digital government can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Emma
@egawen

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Ways of working

👻Is agile dead? Not quite. A thorough explanation about why early adopters, who have been using agile for 10-15 years, think agile is dead; while the late majority ("military, to governments, to insurance companies, telecoms, banks, utilities, conservative organizations") are just starting to get into it now.

🙌Why budgeting kills agile and innovation. The many ways in which traditional org structures and budgeting kills agile, embeds silos, and stops cross-functional teams working.

🦀Carrie Bishop reflects on 2 years in San Francisco, and how it's not about websites. Until it is. Also: about building internal teams, and how to make change in federated organisations.

📝A handy list of learning resources for folks interested in exploratory research and product discovery.

Government news

🇩🇰
The New York Times interviews Casper Klynge, Denmark's tech ambassador. How small countries might influence tech giants (behind login).

🇮🇹
Italy's PagoPA (for digital payments) has become a State Owned Enterprise (SOE), to act as a 'strategic asset' for the country.

🇺🇦
In the Ukraine, a new, young, and reforming government with a large majority is looking to put 30 most used government services online, all mobile first.

🇪🇪
One to watch: the Estonian government has launched a review of the state budget to improve the process of drafting its expenditure in the future. It aims to adopt performance-based budgeting from 2020.

🇦🇺
New South Wales are hoping to kill off big bang IT projects for good.

News from Public Digital

Mike and Andrew on their recent visit to Australia.

Alessia (who worked with us over the summer) took an in depth look at how digital government can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Ben wrote about how we use week notes at Public Digital, as we are rarely all together in the same place, and we work across many time zones.

👋If you have any feedback you can leave it in this google form (it's anonymous by default). Thanks to those who did so last time around.